


Take your time (I just want to take your time)

by hedakomtrashkru (direwolfofhighgarden)



Series: This is us [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Clexa, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/F, Fluff, One Shot, Pining, So much but it's casual for now, Songfic, everything is trash, hella fluff for days, his pills his hands his jeans, literally just trash, may be part of a collection of songfics if I'm inspired enough who knows, now I'm covered in the trash pulled apart at the seams, pining for days it seems, they probably only exchange a total of three whole sentences in the entire thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 06:21:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4949980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/direwolfofhighgarden/pseuds/hedakomtrashkru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's that girl, the one out of your grasp, but the one to whose gravity you're always drawn. Then again, everyone else is too, for how could anyone not love Clarke Griffin? In a great big world where everyone's just in the background playing only secondary in your vast drama, Lexa finds herself slowly coming up into the heart of Clarke's universe, and she finds that perhaps for once it's okay to be stuck.</p><p>or</p><p>The songfic drabble that was inspired by that The 1975 songfic that was so good I actually almost flung myself out of the atmosphere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take your time (I just want to take your time)

**Author's Note:**

> So! I've overcome my fear of writing Clexa (indefinitely). If you know me, I've spent an impressively ridiculous amount of time tossing my trash all over the Orphan Black fandom, and I may or may not have subsequently become diluted of inspiration and have stopped writing anything altogether. But now, here I am.
> 
> If you know not a thing about me, I suppose knowing this fic is directly inspired by what's essentially classified as a country song suffices to allude to the vastness of trash I truly am. (But honestly, it's a sweet song, and besides... country music is just good vibes and a better time, all about love, maybe getting drunk, and maybe heartache. What honestly is so bad about it! It's everything anyone ever wanted, but somehow nobody wants. But I truly digress...)
> 
> Take it easy on me friends (or don't, actually, I could use the critique), and perhaps maybe boost my ass into writing more? I much prefer reading all the works of the geniuses that are already in the Clexa tag, but likeeeee, nobody is the omnipresent update machine like I expect them to be? (The audacity!)

When she sees her, it's something else.

And Lexa could berate herself fifty times over and perhaps sideways about being such a terrible godforsaken cliche, and she surmises that perhaps she should indulge for once in a drink or three about this unfortunate fact about herself, but there really is no other way to describe it.

When she sees her, Lexa falters, because the girl's eyes are blue as the ocean (that's another drink), and though it's something else to Lexa, it's probably nothing much different for the girl. The girl smiles, and Lexa nearly damn trips – perhaps she really shouldn't be drinking if she's acting this way sober, yet the smile doesn't quite reach the girl's eyes. It could only be described as a the beacon of light from a lighthouse not quite piercing through the fog blanketing the space between the sea and the sky.

Lexa's not quite sure if the girl was looking at her or not, but because she's been standing in the doorway for what could very well be an elastic infinity and a half, she supposes the girl is just looking for her friend between the comings and goings of the bar.

Two drinks on the proverbial, perhaps soon to be very much real drinking score board, Lexa is still irrevocably drawn to whatever this girl is.

There's quite a plethora of things that Lexa is unfairly talented at– anyone worth their salt would say so, and she does the one thing she does best. She goes up to the bar, sits next to the girl and, again almost tripping on the invisible forces of the universe conspiring to make a fool of herself, stumbles on what could be interpreted as a cross of a choking and mumbling sound, she finally says hi.

By a miracle of fate, the girl somehow sifts through all the noises that Lexa trips over and she greets her, even adds in a brief smile– Lexa swears the fog in the girl's eyes is almost reaching beyond the haze, and she even thinks it lingers just a second longer than it's supposed to, longer than it usually does when she's staring at nothing in particular. Something vague in Lexa wishes that it wasn't just her being polite, though there's no time to dwell on it just yet.

She opts to leave a seat between them at the bar stool, and Lexa finds comfort in the fact that she can't screw up much else if she's sitting down, so now it's all left to whatever lapse of judgement her mind and her mouth could procure next.

“Clarke, right?”

Lexa doesn't need to ask, she knows. It's more of a formality, really. Perhaps Clarke knows that too. But she's graceful enough not to show any signs of suspicion or exasperation. Lexa had seen when one of the bartenders returned to Clarke, probably having just seen her for the first time that day and greeted her like an old friend. Perhaps she was. Clarke was everybody's friend, it seemed.

They were familiar enough with each other, but not enough to consider each other close friends. At least, not to be considered close enough friends as Raven, or perhaps Octavia, both who were notoriously close to Clarke, and infinitely more infamous for the amounts of squealing and general good vibes that occurred whenever the trio were ever in a room together.

Lexa knows this, but she doesn't know what Clarke knows what Lexa knows.

What Lexa does know is that Clarke isn't looking for a relationship, or at least, is not known to be actively interested and why should she? She's 22, almost 23 in a few months or something. She's in her prime, and Lexa doesn't know much else, but in this small town of whispers or outright conversation, Clarke is mentioned in at least half a dozen times in anybody's day as a significantly incredible jack of all trades, and most notably the girl who takes shit from no one. Clarke is the girl anyone would want to take home to the parents, but she is also the girl who isn't about that - the girl who will make you work for it (as you should), and then some.

_Did you know she'd photographed my son's engagement party? She insists that it's not really her forte, but I tell you, that girl has a special eye for capturing the greatest moments._

_I'd seen her the other day, she's working on some interior design I believe. I think she's got a big gig set up in the city, almost a few lined up if I'm not mistaken._

_Have you heard? The Griffins' daughter is making quite a name for herself in the art world, she's definitely not selling her art for what it's worth!_

Many occasions Lexa has met Clarke, and Lexa knows her, but Lexa doesn't _know_ her. Lexa can't even pretend to say she doesn't think about it at all. How possibly could she ever find herself a significant body in Clarke's orbit when everyone else was pretty much in the same circumstance as her? Who were they all but floating entities admiring the gravity that is Clarke Griffin?

Their conversation is filled with the same old: how's work? How's school? How's the family? Anything exciting?, with certain silences filling the spaces, and when Lexa feels like she's got it all wrong, she steals a glance at Clarke and sees that the girl appreciates those silences. Not even in a malicious way – how ever could Clarke be malicious?, Lexa understands.

She knows how the noises could pile up until it becomes a weight sitting in your skull. Lexa could only imagine how much more substantial that weight becomes since Clarke Griffin is _Clarke Griffin_. Lexa can't even handle her family asking her questions on a good day. Sometimes the silences are an escape. And if Clarke Griffin is alone at a bar on a Thursday night, perhaps she's looking for a reprieve. It must be the same reason Lexa finds herself in the same bar on a Thursday night as well.

So they keep talking. Clarke shows no signs of wanting to leave, and when Lexa shifts in her seat, she swears there's an instant where Clarke looks like she's going to say something, looks like she's going to make a move to stop something, but it's gone as quickly as it appears, and Clarke rests her head on her hand with the arm she props up on the bar, almost fully facing Lexa when she realizes Lexa isn't going anywhere.

Lexa couldn't tell anyone what time it was, with the dimensions of the world shifting in and out of each other easily as time flows into her space and the space around her becomes two beers and those beers eventually become landmarks in the time she's spent in this space.

Clarke could perhaps say the same thing, but she was here before Lexa, and it can't be quite certain how long she's been here – perhaps not too long. But neither of them make a move to leave, and the drinks flow as easily as the conversation.

Somewhere in that flux of space and time merging into an entirely new dimension like the chemicals from the alcohol swirling with their mental devices, a man approaches the bar – Lexa wouldn't have realized he was there if he hadn't essentially smashed his hand into the bar. He's on Clarke's other side, standing in between the seat next to her and Clarke herself, and he has to lean into her to beckon the bartender who's on the other side.

As he's waiting, he tries to strike up a conversation with Clarke, not entirely interrupting anything as Lexa's conversation with her had drifted into one of its many comfortable lulls, and nobody can fault him.

Clarke, gracious as ever acknowledges him, doesn't make a show of moving away from him even when she can smell the alcohol on his breath as it hits her hair. Somehow, the guy's able to have some kind of a conversation, and he's still got his hand on the bar as if he's waiting for the moment when he can wrap Clarke up if only she'd give any go ahead, but she won't. Still, he drops by just as Lexa had, the same questions, the same sentiments, but not the same intentions.

Clarke probably knows this too, as she's looking around more, her eyes shifting to every inch of the room as if she's looking for something. It's not an entirely big place, but Lexa still can't see what she's looking for. In fact, come to think of it, Lexa doesn't know if Clarke's here alone, doesn't know if either of her friends are here, and Lexa almost feels selfish for being so enraptured by Clarke that she hadn't been aware of much else going on around her.

Perhaps Raven or Octavia will come by soon enough and will get Clarke on the dancefloor – tables simply arranged for a space near the music player for the nights there isn't a DJ on the stage, but when Lexa sees no such person coming to Clarke's aid, she thinks perhaps it's on her to put her drink down and hop into the situation with another question to assert that she's not done having a conversation with Clarke. Perhaps she should jump in, and with Clarke's incredibly subtle signals of being almost too-done with the situation, Lexa is just close enough to intervene in her own subtle (maybe not so subtle) way before the guy, by some miracle, forgets Clarke instantaneously and makes his way back to his group.

Clarke lets out a small breath even she probably didn't know she was holding, and Lexa deflates with her own relief, glad that she didn't have to do anything that was beyond her scope. It wasn't exactly her place to save Clarke from anything, and who was she to tell when Clarke needed her help or not?

But she smiles at Lexa again, and this time, she knows that the fog in her eyes has become an easy mist in the time that she'd been talking to Lexa. This time, Lexa knows that whatever she saw in Clarke's eyes wasn't some fleeting fragment of her imagination.

Some twenty minutes or so later, Clarke looks down at her phone and is genuinely shocked. Lexa can't help the smile that lifts at the edge of her lips as she watches a flustered Clarke gather her surroundings.

Perhaps she too, was just as lost as Lexa in that glowy haze of just being present and to bask in the bliss of not having to be anywhere else, if only for a moment.

Lexa is glad that she could have been a part of that. She's almost proud that she got to play some part of tiny significance in Clarke's grand universe.

Clarke looks to her and Lexa sees an apology. Lexa is moved and so badly wants to tell Clarke something, perhaps not to apologize, perhaps probably to thank _her_ , to thank her for something, for everything, but before she can, Clarke smiles. The haze in her eyes is gone, and the distant longing that seemed ever-reaching in Clarke's eyes had dissipated. Lexa doesn't know what to make of that information.

Clarke does it for her, she thanks Lexa for the company, and Lexa can only tip her drink up to her. But Clarke stays for longer, seems to want to prolong her departure, and it's a sweet delicacy and Clarke is sweet and Clarke is gracious and kind and a sweet mercy and Lexa too wants her to stay, she wants to be selfish with Clarke and wants so badly to say, _take your time._

But instead, all Clarke says is, “Thanks for your time.” And she thinks for a split moment, Lexa wondering at all the possibilities that could be firing off all at once in that great big universe in her head before she adds. “I really enjoyed our conversation.”

Lexa smiles at her, simply nods, and when Clarke finally makes a move, that's when she speaks up. “You don't have to thank me. I liked talking to you.” And just when Lexa thinks that night had gone smoothly enough, she proves herself wrong.

“Rather, I do.”

When Clarke raises an eyebrow, it's only then that Lexa realizes the implication of her words _(I do, like, seriously, Lexa? Could you have picked anything more cringe-worthy?) _and just as quickly, a blush makes a mad rush to her cheeks in a race of who gets to screw Lexa over first?- her mouth or the embarrassment soon to make its appearance on her face?__

But as per usual, life's equality makes itself known to Lexa in the least desirable of ways as a fair show of both her lack of a filter and her blush manifesting themselves simultaneously. “I mean, I do like talking to you. Not like in the past tense. I enjoy you no matter what. Your presence that is– I enjoy your company.”

“Well then, we should talk more often.”

In a mad twist of fate, Lexa's the one who's saved this time. Clarke is ever so sweet, ever so gracious, and it's the small mercies and now, the small miracles, that really keep Lexa going.

And before Lexa can even realize anything, Clarke's gone, and she'd left nothing to even indicate she was ever there. Somehow, it's still all fine to Lexa.

Clarke may easily have come and gone, and perhaps she could choose never to return again, but it's a small enough town and the world somehow conspires to expand or to shrink itself when circumstances call for it, so Lexa isn't bothered.

 _Take your time_ , she tells the universe. _Take your time_ , she tells herself.

 _I don't want to steal your freedom, I don't want to change your mind. I don't have to take your heart. I just want to take your time,_ she tells Clarke- it's both an afterthought and a promise.

**Author's Note:**

> Come bug me at cloneclubdrinkstrolley on tumblr maybe, or give me shit for enjoying country music, it's a thing my friends do and I always welcome friends.


End file.
